It’s now academic that Tyson Fury has tested positive for COVID-19, and his long-awaited July 24th trilogy match against his nemesis Deontay Wilder will need to be postponed. ESPN is reporting the Fury vs. Wilder III fighter to be postponed until a later date.
They were scheduled to battle on pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Wilder said he was “closing the chapter” on his rivalry with Fury, as he wanted to send him into retirement by giving him a beating. Now, Wilder will have to delay his chapter-ending fight with Fury a little while longer.
According to Dan Rafael, Fury (30-0-1, 21 KOs) was vaccinated, but he failed to get his second shot. Why Fury didn’t return for the second shot is unknown.
With millions at stake for the trilogy match with former WBC heavyweight champion Wilder (42-1-1, 41 KOs), you would have liked to have seen Fury make sure he was fully vaccinated before negotiating and scheduling a fight.
Three other members of Fury’s training team also tested positive for Covid-19. It would be interesting to know which of them was the spreader of this lethal virus, but we’ll probably never know.
Given how serious this illness is, it’s likely we won’t see Fury vs. Wilder 3 until the fall, if then. Alexander Povetkin recently tested positive for COVID-19 late last year, and he looked awful when he came back to face Dillian Whyte last March. The illness took a lot out of Povetkin.
For Fury, he already looked kind of thin, emaciated, and worn out even before he started training camp. This wasn’t the vital Fury that had pummeled Wilder last year.
BREAKING: Per source, Tyson Fury was one of the people in his camp who tested positive for Covid-19 and the fight with Wilder is postponed. New date TBA. I’ve been told Fury got one vaccine dose but never got the 2nd. At least 3 others in camp also positive. #boxing #FuryWilder3
— Dan Rafael (@DanRafael1) July 8, 2021
Now, all we can do is hope the Fury-Wilder III fight takes place later this year, and the illness doesn’t drag on for Tyson. We don’t know if Fury caught the variant version of COVID-19 or if it’s the less-lethal regular COVID-19.
Fury and Wilder have been sitting inactive since fighting a year and a half ago in February 2020. Fury wanted to get back in the ring last December against Agit Kabayal, but the fight didn’t get made.
After that, Fury chose to walk away from his contractual rematch in an attempt to fight Anthony Joshua on August 14th, but Team Wilder took it to an arbitrator, who enforced the rematch clause that he had.
This delay actually should help Fury because he looked too thin to use his size on Wilder like he did last year. Fury weighed in the 270s for that fight, and he was huge and powerful.
During Fury’s career, he’d never looked that massive and powerful before. Whatever protein shakes and weight lifting Fury did for that fight, it really worked. He was like Superman in that fight. Now that Fury has more time, he could bulk if he’s not too ill.
Assuming that Fury has a bad case of COVID-19, his lungs might be less than 100% when he does come back. Many people complain about their stamina not being what it was after coming back from that illness.
If Fury is dealing with that problem, he might be wise to postpone the fight until 2022. It will be up to Wilder to devote the remainder of 2021 sitting and waiting for Fury. If Wilder does take a stay busy fight, it’ll be interesting to see if he still gets the Fury trilogy if he loses to someone.
Fury and his team were probably licking toilet seats to get the duck. None of them got vaccinated either it seems.